Pixar's La Luna Up for an Oscar

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Casarosa's Italy-inspired short makes it to the short list.

By Max Nicholson

The characters of Toy Story have raised quite a stir this year, appearing in two Pixar shorts running before Cars 2 and The Muppets, respectively. But when it came time for Oscar nominations, Woody and Buzz didn't quite make the cut for short film selections. This year the potential nom is going to one of the studio's more lyrical upcoming shorts, La Luna.

In a recent interview with The LA Times' 24 Frames, the short's director Enrico Casarosa explained that he wanted to pitch something a little different to Pixar heads John Lasseter and Ed Catmull.

"They really loved La Luna, and John embraced the film's Italian flavor," said Casarosa, who has worked at Pixar as a storyboard artist since 2002. "From the beginning I wanted a slightly more poetic tone, which we haven't done in shorts a whole lot [at Pixar]. It was cool that they were behind doing something a little different."

La Luna depicts a young Italian boy accompanying his father and grandfather to work. (Check out the clip above.) However, the film's dialogue is not in Italian or English, but a quirky style of gibberish. While Lasseter initially found the gibberish annoying in the temp track, he was later brought around to the idea when he heard the final audio mix featuring voice actors who had more experience with it. The voice of the grandfather in particular found a very unique solution to getting his performance just right.

"He came in and said, 'Should I do this with my teeth or without my teeth?' And we [recorded] everything without his teeth," said Casarosa.

The film clocks in at around seven minutes, making it Pixar's longest-running short to date. It's currently slated to make its theatrical debut in front of the studio's upcoming feature Brave.